


roll the bones

by blackkat



Series: Konoha 12 Drabbles [14]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Edo Tensei, F/M, Missing-Nin Sakura, Pre-Shippuden, grey morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 14:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21283256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “Damn it,” Sakura groans, after the second minor lord in two days closes the door in her face. Apparently the movies and novels all lied about how much black-market work is available to people in that line of employment.
Relationships: Deidara/Haruno Sakura
Series: Konoha 12 Drabbles [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1422214
Comments: 54
Kudos: 1017





	roll the bones

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: ooooo for the prompt request, what about missing-nin sakura?

It’s not something that Sakura ever thought to worry about before, but finding jobs as a missing-nin so she can eat is easily the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal. Even the not-quite-ANBU who are after her are quite so irritating.

“_Damn it_,” Sakura groans, after the second minor lord in two days closes the door in her face. Apparently the movies and novels all lied about how much black-market work is available to people in that line of employment.

She’s hungry. Her feet hurt. She’s got a crick in her back from too many nights sleeping on cold ground, and there’s a rainstorm coming. If she can't find work soon, she’s going to have to wait it out in the forest, and probably get sick in the process.

The books _definitely_ make life as a missing-nin look more glamorous. For that matter, even Zabuza and Haku did. This is just—irritating, and tiring, and _lonely_.

Drawing her cloak up around herself, Sakura takes a breath, closes her eyes, and then opens them. Rises to her feet, because sitting outside the lord’s manor isn't going to get her money for food, and makes a quick check of the area before she starts down the road towards the town. It’s a fair ways, and her sandals are a little too small; she’s almost tempted to strip them off and walk barefoot, but that will put her at a disadvantage if someone _does_ manage to find her.

Getting out of Fire Country is her best bet, but—the border is far, and she’s tired, and she doesn’t know where to go once she _does_ leave.

Ahead, the dirt road curves around a stand of trees, and Sakura sweeps a careful look over the trunks and branches but doesn’t see anything moving. The ANBU sent after her—Root, one of them said, but Sakura's never heard of that division and isn't sure he was telling the truth—are good, but she’s learned to read the signs of their presence, has kept her head down and stayed on back roads and slept in forests so that there’s no trace of her path. She probably has a few days to move on before they pick up her trail.

Sakura swallows, closes her hands into fists and forces herself to keep moving. Tsunade will fix things, she tells herself yet again, clinging to the words, desperate to believe them. Tsunade will realize she did what she had to, that she only used the kinjutsu because there was no choice. Itachi was too powerful, and he was looking for Naruto, and he’d already hurt Sasuke so much. She _couldn’t_ let him win.

He never expected Edo Tensei.

(No one did.)

It was a law, though. Sakura broke it. She used a forbidden jutsu, and not one forbidden for danger to the user. Edo Tensei is forbidden because it’s terrible, because it’s _wrong_, and Sakura used it anyway, stole the scroll because she was curious and experimented and _learned it_.

She wonders, a little, if Tsunade would have cared so much if Sakura hadn’t brought her grandmother back as a gruesome puppet soldier.

It _worked_, though. Mito killed Itachi, never broke free of Sakura's control. She was used and dismissed and the man behind the Uchiha Massacre was _dead_ so Sasuke could return to the village, and then—

Then Sakura woke up in a prison cell to a sword falling towards her throat, and she used what Tsunade taught her to kill that ANBU. Killed him, tore out of her cell, and _ran_, because there was nothing else for her to do.

Footsteps.

Pausing in the shadow of a blooming plum tree, Sakura watches the figure approach. A boy, with long blond hair that reminds her of Ino like a kick to the ribs, and she watches him approach for a long moment. He’s very definitely a shinobi, dressed in green and fishnets, with a weapons pouch at his waist. He looks irritated, too, eyeing the clouds above like they’re a personal insult, and—

There’s a hitai-ate tied around his forehead, the mark of Iwa scored with a deep, obvious slash.

Sakura can see the moment he notices her, the sudden stiffening of his shoulders as he comes to a sharp halt in the center of the road, the way he bristles. His mouth opens, but before he can yell Sakura pushes her hood back.

The sight of her own scratched hitai-ate makes him close his mouth, and instead of getting defensive, he nods.

“You work for the asshole up there, un?” he asks, jerking a thumb at the manor.

Sakura snorts. “He’s not hiring,” she says, maybe a little bitterly. “Apparently he has contracts with Konoha.”

“Only until they say no to a job, un,” the boy huffs, and when Sakura starts walking, he turns and falls into step, apparently content to leave the lord behind without checking further. “Shitty bastards. Like any one of these assholes has standards, un.”

“Is money a standard?” Sakura asks. “He seems to have a lot of that.”

“He wishes, un.” The boy casts a sideways glance at her, and then hooks his hands in his pockets. “I'm Deidara, of Iwa. Formerly.”

“Sakura, formerly of Konoha.” She offers him a smile, then takes one glance back at the manor and sighs. “All I wanted was a room at an in for _one night_.”

Deidara makes a sound of disgusted agreement. “Konoha's _boring_, un,” he complains. “No one’s hiring explosives experts around here.”

“Not enough unrest,” Sakura points out, a little dryly. It’s not like Fire Country being relatively stable is a secret. “Obviously.”

Deidara scoffs, hunching his shoulders. “Iwa doesn’t come into Konoha's territory, un,” he says grudgingly. “I got sick of dodging bounty hunters.”

With a sympathetic wince, Sakura pulls her hood back up. Pink hair is too distinctive to leave it down for long. “Ugh,” she mutters in agreement.

Suddenly, Deidara stops short. Blinking, Sakura turns to face him, wondering what he’s seen, if something is wrong—

“Hell,” Deidara says, annoyed. “We’re _missing-nin_, un!”

Sakura blinks at him, then raises a brow. “I noticed,” she says. “What about it?”

Deidara tosses his hair, and it’s so very much like Ino that Sakura can't quite breathe for a second. “If we want money, and he has it,” he says, “we can just _take it_, un.”

That, Sakura reflects, is a little outside the scope of most missing-nin. Then again, it’s not like robbing a lord is going to make a lot of difference when she already has whole squads after her. And—she _really _wants a new pair of sandals and a soft bed for a night.

“You said you're an explosives expert?” she asks, eying Deidara with renewed interest.

Deidara smirks. “Yeah, un. And you're—?”

A flash of white mask among the dark trees catches Sakura's eye, and she turns, throwing back her hood and raising her hands. The seal inked onto her palm, set there in some bitter bout of spite, kindles with midnight brilliance, and Sakura grabs for the hank of long red hairs resting safely in her weapons pouch. Slams a hand down, flat against the road, and watches the seal bloom.

The first Root member lands right in the middle of it, only to find himself frozen to the ground, and Sakura activates the seal half a second before the screaming starts.

Mito rises in the confines of the seal, billowing white robes and a crown of gold, her crimson hair spilling to the ground. Her eyes are black, her skin cracked as if to show the corpse beneath, and she smiles, thin and deadly.

“Me?” Sakura says, grim pleasure and weathered rage, the fury of doing something good and being punished for it. She killed a criminal. Surely, _surely_, that could never be a bad thing.

(She thinks, these days, that she understands Orochimaru far more than she had ever thought to before.)

“I'm a necromancer,” Sakura says, and golden light fills the air, Mito's sealwork blazing like there's a sun trapped in the lines.

Unlike Hinata, unlike Ino, unlike Kiba and Chōji and Kakashi and everyone else in Konoha, Deidara doesn’t flinch away. He watches Mito rise with wide eyes, expression filling with fascination, and then _laughs_.

“Now there’s some art, un!” he crows. In his hands, a bird of white clay takes wing, soaring up into the air and arrowing straight towards the ANBU. “Let’s send it out with a bang!”

Sakura is fourteen, a missing-nin, a criminal. But she’s beaten death in a way no other medic ever has, and there's nothing in this world that can stop her.

She tears through the squad of Root ANBU, and even if they're right, even if she’s a monster, she’s a powerful one. They can't even _dream_ of touching her.


End file.
